What's up with Newtie's return to fame lately?

The last time I gave Newt Gingrich any thought, it was to piss some rage-filled blood upon discovering he was having an affair while chasing after Clinton in the Lewinski era. To me, that was the kind of double-whammy that should have tanked his career entirely: not only was he a moral failure of a human being (so goes the thought process), but he was a massive hypocrite to boot.

And yet, somehow, in 2010, Newt Gingrich is the newest go-to guy for the GOP. I can’t tell if it’s because they’re hoping to relive a pre-Bush era of Republican supremacy and so they’re bringing back the guy that took down the Dems in 1994, or if their future crop of candidates is so piss-poor that even Esquire is calling him the potential 2012 presidential nominee.

Part of me would like to think of this as a good thing. Newt Gingrich may have been a ruthless bastard, but he’s a smart bastard as well. Whereas Dubya and Palin attempted to usher in a wave of “aw shucks” down home folksy Republicanism, complete with the kind of IQ scores and braindead babbling that we tend to associate with that kind of personality. In a sense, Newt’s return may indicate that the Republicans want intelligent people carrying the baton for them.

On the other hand, Newt also represents the GOP at its most ruthless and hateful. Again, this was a guy who tried to bring down a president with -gate after -gate even as he himself was guilty of the crimes he was prosecuting. And let’s not forget that it was successful. The 1994 midterms were a disaster for Democrats, riding on a wave of failure thanks to the health care debacle, all led by Newtie. It was the “permanent Republican majority” that stuck around from 1994 to 2006. We don’t want that again.

So when he rears his fat head to talk about what “Americans” dislike about Obama, it obviously doesn’t represent much by way of legitimate sentiment from the population, but it sure as shit represents what we might see come the 2012 campaign cycle. This guy knows how to get the tide going his way, so I’d say to be careful. What he’s talking about now may become the memes of tomorrow.